This film provoked the most irrational critical response since Troy.
In fact, it is worthwhile to contrast the critical reactions to the two movies. Troy was often criticized for being too historically
accurate. It treated the ancient gods as bullshit, but bullshit the
Greeks genuinely believed in, so events could be influenced by the
mortals' belief in those gods, but could not be influenced by their actual
intervention. In other words, the film basically asked "what set of
real events could have inspired Homer's mythological reconstruction?"
Many critics missed the entire point and responded as if the film's creators had somehow
forgotten to include the gods. On the other extreme, Marie Antoinette received the opposite
reaction. Its critics responded to it as if it were supposed to be a
history lecture at Cambridge, and caviled about every miniscule
historical detail which the film misstated. I guess there's no
pleasing them. A film cannot be either too accurate or too inaccurate.
It works like the porridge at the three bears' house. It must be "just
right."

Just as they did with Troy, the critics
seemed to charge naively ahead in the assumption that the screenwriter
of Marie Antoinette (Sophia Coppola, who also directed) simply got all
the facts wrong. That, of course, is crap. She knew the facts. She
researched the script. She based the film on a work written by the
esteemed historian Lady
Antonia Fraser. To the extent that Marie Antoinette's real words are
known, Coppola used them. And she was undoubtedly well aware that her
story was merely the frivolous prologue to Antoinette's life rather than the
dramatic meat of her story, which occurred after the royals were
forced from Versailles. It's a safe bet that when Coppola decided
which part of the story to tell, and when she changed the
known facts, she was aware what she was doing, and did so for a
purpose. I have no problem with that in theory because the facts
sometimes get in the way of a greater truth. My problem with the
script is that I couldn't figure out why she made the changes.

Start with the doggie incident. History has
recorded that when 14-year-old Antoinette traveled from Austria to
France, she was forced to surrender all of her Austrian possessions,
including every stitch of her clothing. She had to undress in front of
her new ladies-in-waiting and get redressed in French clothes. She was
even asked to surrender her beloved pooch, but after much negotiation
between the French and Austrian delegations, she was finally allowed
to keep the dog. It seems to me that Coppola had an excellent
opportunity here. Imagine various and assorted stuffy ambassadors,
nobles, and protocol officers debating for hours, furiously
negotiating terms and demanding concessions, and ultimately deciding
the very fate of nations over a puppy. That could have been a very
entertaining scene. Could have been, but wasn't, because Coppola
decided to change the story so that Antoinette was forced to surrender
her pet, crying, but ultimately conceding when told that she could
have all the French dogs she wanted. Now why, I am wondering,
did Ms Coppola think that was better than the true story?

Another example. The film shows Marie Antoinette
saying courageously that she must stay at Versailles alongside her
husband when all the nobles were fleeing the besieged palace. In real
life, her bags and the children's bags were packed and she was waiting
for her husband's permission to leave. It was Louis who decided that
the family should remain at Versailles. This is a key fact in French
history, because Louis's decision to force his family to remain was
one that he regretted intensely, and one which would cause great
suffering for all the people he loved. Antoinette's desire to leave
was not cowardice, but just good common sense, a characteristic which
her husband famously lacked. (She was not lacking in bravery, as all
her future actions demonstrated.) Point one here is that I'm not sure
why Coppola wanted a different spin in this scene. Point two is that
this particular interpretation angered many people. The French people
reacted to some of these intrinsic changes as Americans might react if
a French movie version of George Washington wanted to chicken out at
Valley Forge but was forced at gunpoint to tough it out. A patriotic
American might get away with that, just as a good Frenchwoman might
have slipped Marie Antoinette past the Cannes audience without being
deluged by a cascade of catcalls. But there are just some things an
outsider can't mess with or, worded another way, white people can't
use the "n" word.

I couldn't remember whether
the real Marie Antoinette
actually took on any lovers, so I checked it out and there doesn't
seem to be any truth to it. Oh, there were plenty of rumors. If there is any nasty rumor which can be
circulated about any human being, there is probably a version of that
rumor about Marie Antoinette. Some of her more notorious
demonstrations of wastrel
behavior spurred an entire cottage industry of exaggerations and lampoons of the most vicious and salacious kind. Some of them were
based at least partly on fact, some of them were negative "spins" of
the facts, and others were just outright fabrication. The rumors of
her sexual appetite seem to be in the latter category. I could find no
justification for any claim that she was unfaithful to her husband,
and I can see no purpose to Coppola's having given weight to the
unsupported rumors.

Having made those points let me say that Marie
Antoinette is original, and is actually a thoughtful film. It is an attempt to
portray how Antoinette became whatever she was, and to offer that
portrayal from Marie's own perspective. She came to France as a
14-year-old girl, the youngest of eleven daughters of the empress of
Austria, and she had never known life outside the court and her own
family. She was immediately taken to Versailles and placed inside
another completely cloistered, shallow, and self-contained
environment, one even more lavish than the one she had left. Exactly
how would we expect her to turn out? The same as any of our own
daughters would turn out in the same situation. She became exactly
what her environment made her. Coppola determined that the best way to
show us what the experience was like for her was to portray it in
completely modern terms. What would happen if Kirsten Dunst, a sweet
and casual all-American girly girl who has grown up in her own
sheltered world, were suddenly transported to the 18th century and
made queen of a country where everyone lived in ornate palaces, abided
by rigid protocol, and spoke with stuffy English accents? There would
be pressures and pleasures, boredom, frustration, and loneliness. And
there would be no way out. It would be
almost exactly like the experience that Marie Antoinette had when she
came to France from Austria. Dunst was basically playing herself reacting as
she would react in the situations Marie was in. That wasn't bad acting
on Kiki's part. This portrayal is precisely the one Dunst was hired to
deliver. It was her task not to recreate Marie Antoinette at Versailles, but to show
Kirsten Dunst at Versailles, to demonstrate vicariously to a modern
female what it would be like if she, the viewer, were transported to
Versailles and made queen.
It's a fantasy film. The film is not supposed to be like Becket,
filled with hand-wringing rhetoric about morality and politics, but
rather more like The Wizard of Oz, or A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court. In order to make the points resonate deep within
modern audiences, Kiki plays a thoroughly modern woman/child, and the
action is backed by modern pop tunes.

Does all that work? Well, critics could not
have been much more divided, but I think so. The film held my
attention from start to finish. It looks great, and it gives off the
right vibe. I think the pop music is perfect because it's the kind of music
Marie Antoinette would listen to if she were alive today. It isn't
possible to put modern audiences in Marie's shoes by using the kind of
music she actually liked, because that music sounds to modern ears
like the kind of music a bearded 60-year-old professor would like, and
that would present a "wrong" Marie to modern audiences, even if it is
technically accurate. This is what I meant about the facts getting in
the way of the truth. In terms of the score, Coppola made a good and
daring choice. I understand Marie Antoinette better after having watched
this movie and having thought about its ideas. I got a better feel for
the character than I ever did from any
"legitimate" history - the film triggered one of those
cartoon light bulbs that means "Oh, I get it."
That's a good thing, isn't it? Isn't that one of the reasons we love
movies? I know the script has altered some facts, and I'm not really
sure why, but on balance I can see exactly what it was trying to
accomplish, and my verdict is that it succeeded.

DVD INFO

DVD features not yet announced.

NUDITY REPORT

Kristen Dunst is seen naked from
behind once at a great distance in darkness. In another scene
the very top of her bum is visible in a medium shot in good
light.

The best "nudity" is not nude at
all. Her nipples are clearly seen beneath a dressing gown.

The
Critics Vote ...

Super-panel consensus: absolutely no
consensus. Ebert (4/4) and Berardinelli (1.5/4) are about as
far apart as they have ever been.

Box Office Mojo.
It grossed $15 million from a maximum of 870 theaters. While
it was not a blockbuster, the revenues per screen were quite
solid, and the week two and three drops were small enough to
indicate some decent word-of-mouth.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

Our own
guideline:

A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.

B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better
is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at
least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial
success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with
good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the
critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also
assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the
box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of
the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people
had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)

C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of
movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are
indistinguishable to you.

C
means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who
like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others
probably will not.

C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film
rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of
film, but films with this rating should be approached with
caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent
or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C-
and an E are indistinguishable to you.

D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. We don't score films below C- that
often, because we like movies and we think that most of them
have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that,
you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.
Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor
popular acceptance.

E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre.

F means that the film is not only unappealing
across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this
film is a C+, a solid costumer with
a highly original way of presenting the story. It's a girly
movie, but it worked for me.